Posts Tagged ‘Chris Cooper’

You read that right. The Boston Sound Collective’s new work “23% Bicycle and/or Ribbons of the Natural Order” is available now, for a Tweet. Just go here and submit your Tweet to be taken to the download page, where you will have a variety of formats available to you, and an option to donate.

23% Bicycle… captures the BSC shortly after an intense series of performances at the Phoneme Festival, a three-night event in Philadelphia featuring members of the band in a series of small groups followed by full BSC sets each evening. In one sense, the music is tight and controlled, maintaining a sustained tension as events peel from one to the next, not so much moving forward as revealing increasingly buried layers. But, from the very first sound, it is clear that everything teeters on chaos. The familiarity between the musicians is apparent, as is their willingness to undermine that familiarity, to send each other to unlit corners and map whatever sublime beauty or horror is found there. To say that the resulting music is dark is to miss its jubilance. It is complex and visceral, the work of an ensemble committed to both its refinement and unraveling.”

On the first couple of spins, this sounds like it’s going to be pretty rewarding to dig into. The surface is pretty moody overall, the sonic palette hearkening back to the golden era of European avant garde music, while deftly avoiding parody. Once your ears adjust to the sea of undulating sounds, you are drawn into an unfolding drama full of shifting colors and textures, with new combination’s and approaches continually emerging. Looking forward to getting closer to this one.